


Anything Past the Horizon

by SugaryShoyu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 11:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29874237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugaryShoyu/pseuds/SugaryShoyu
Summary: Anna spent two millennia away from home, unseen, unheard, unfelt before she fell. She saw love, loyalty, and forgiveness, sex and chocolate cake. She saw humanity, and she wanted it enough to break apart for it.aka my imaginings of the experiences that led to Anna's fall, and ultimately her death.





	Anything Past the Horizon

Anna was unbearably lonely.

It shouldn't be possible with the melodies of the Host ringing through her at every moment. There should be no room in her grace, overflowing with love for her home and her Father. But she had not seen her home in two thousand years, and she had never known her Father's face, and she was adrift. It opened a chasm in her, a hole that gnawed and grew wider and deeper until she had no choice but to notice it. She had no name for it until, of all things, a human named it for her.

She was a woman, thin and fair-haired, with lines just starting to settle around her eyes. Anna enjoyed her routine, the busy repetitiveness of it. She was patient with her children, skillful in her work, and earnest in her prayers; she wasn't the first person to kneel at her bedside, but she was the first Anna heard say two prayers each night. The first was always to Anna's Father, asking safety and health for her children, for herself. The second was to her husband, and she spoke it like a letter to someone far away, never quite hoping for an answer even as she murmured over and over how she missed him— how horribly lonely she was to face the world without him. When she finished she wiped her eyes, lifted her chin, and lay down to sleep. Anna thought it must have been a Herculean task.

Anna was, first and foremost, a soldier— a leader, in fact. She had faced down the legions of Hell and witnessed the first battle between Michael and Lucifer himself; she felt no fear. The first time Anna found someone she could not bear to look away from, it was the most terrifying moment of her life.

Humans were brightest of all her Father's creations; they were billions of palm-sized stars walking the Earth, and even those who eventually slipped into the Pit under the weight of corruption shined for the briefest moment beforehand. This man, though, was more than a distant star or a piece of art crafted by her Father's hand. He was warm. People turned their faces to him like flowers to the Sun, and Anna found herself doing the same. He threw his head back when he laughed and paid no mind to the summer heat, and he sang and danced and did all the things people do when they're filled with the light of life. When his dark eyes twinkled with mischief and his teeth flashed in the sunlight, Anna had to check for the hollow inside her, to see if it was still there. It was, biting as ever, but for an instant something had rushed in— tried to fill the hole. She had felt it. It was barely a blip in her grace, a raindrop in a great lake. Even so, it was monumental, a sheer cliff calling her to dive off the edge, and her wings couldn't save her from it. She flew halfway around the world to escape, but it was already there, and soon enough she gave up and returned in time to see the man carry his wife over the threshold of their new apartment.

Anna had seen sex before, but when the woman paused to press a feather-light kiss to his nose, and he answered with a flurry of kisses across her dark face that left her giggling until he caught the sound in her mouth, Anna found she had never really seen it before after all. Even as she left them she could still hear their shared promises and words of love, whispers honey-sweet.

When another war began, Anna prayed to her Father to let it end quickly, to soften hearts and bring swift justice. It dragged on, and when the call burned through Bronzeville as fast as any other place, the couple's oldest child was just old enough, and the man was still young enough. Anna followed them across the sea, and there she considered disobedience for the first time. When the man was sent home to be laid to rest, Anna stayed to watch his son until the boy followed his father to Heaven.

Anna wanted so badly to go home.

There were no new orders, no reports to make, no word from her family. They had never been her family before Earth. Her Father was Lord and the rest were simply the Host— those she commanded and those who commanded her. But Castiel, Uriel, Samandriel— they were her brothers, estranged though they were, and she craved the sight of them. So when a boy hesitated outside his own front door, duffel under one arm, shoulders still set for marching, she watched as if he were her. The first knock was tentative, a quick rap that barely made a sound; a deep breath, and the second knock was firmer. The man who opened the door still had some brown in his beard, but it was very little. His wide green eyes matched the boy's.

The man made no move at all aside from looking his son up and down, fingers tight on the edge of the door. The boy opened his mouth, paused to shift his weight and lick his lips before trying again. The anxious placations spilled out almost too quickly to follow after that, and the apology fell when he ducked his head, swiped roughly across his eyes. The man's hand slid from the door and came to rest gingerly on his son's shoulder. Then, any hesitation gone, he tugged the boy into a fierce embrace, and only held tighter for the broken sob he got in response, forgiveness and apologies murmured as a matter of course. When they pulled apart the boy wiped his eyes on his sleeve and followed his father inside for a meal and a cup of coffee. When they spoke, everything did not pick up as if no time had passed, but when the boy's mother and sisters walked in the door there were more tears, more smothering hugs between greetings.

Almost two thousand years ago, Anna received strict orders to watch humanity without interfering— to remain unseen, unheard, unfelt. When the boy was bleeding out eight thousand miles from home and crying for his mother and father, Anna made sure he lived to see them again. One boy who didn't know what soldiers really do must not have been important in God's plan, because no one came to punish her for her disobedience, and after that the choice didn't haunt her the way she thought it might.

Of all things, it wasn't solitude that made Anna realize she would never return home. It wasn't love or loyalty or forgiveness; it was chocolate cake. Where there was food, people gathered, and where there was chocolate cake, they smiled blissfully. The girl who got the first bite danced in her seat while her friends laughed at the antics and served themselves. She tossed a grin over her shoulder at another girl and leaned affectionately into the hug she received in return. The two stayed close for the night, and if anyone but Anna caught their fingers tangling together under the table between secret glances and quick smiles, no one mentioned it. When they stole away after the party, they grinned at their own hands swinging between them like an inside joke just for them. They pressed kisses to cheeks and hands and mouths, and one pulled the other into her lap and danced fingertips across the points of her hips. After, when they were stretched loose-limbed across a bed and one lover was absently brushing her hand over the jut of the other's collarbone, the smooth length of her arm, the soft round of her thigh, Anna imagined that she was the object of that easy, tactile affection. She saw lips curl unbidden into a smile, the speck of chocolate at the corner that was wiped away with a thumb. They were open and unselfconscious, and Anna found herself wanting. The cliff loomed ahead of her, the hollow inside her— she wanted so, so much.

"Castiel, I need to speak with you."

"Anna."

He said nothing else, listening and watching as always. Anna had always been fond of him, her younger brother who struggled to follow orders. Fondness might be as close as she could get to love as an angel, and as it turned out, it wasn't close enough.

"Brother, what do you think of humans?"

He thought carefully and finally said as if it answered everything, "They are our Father's creations."

"And? Do you think they're beautiful?"

"Yes." His answer was quicker this time, unguarded. "Despite their challenges and limited time, so many of them are determined to live decent lives. I admire them for it."

"That isn't what I mean." Frustration and impatience flashed with a heat she wasn't used to feeling. "Haven't you noticed? They have so much more to them than we do— their love and loyalty and their will. They get hungry and they eat and they enjoy it, Castiel. They feel tired so they sleep, and when they wake they hope the day will be good; and they have sex because it feels good and because they love."

He didn't understand. He couldn't, still too full of his unending, angelic, pointless affection.

"I want to love."

"Anna—"

"We have been following orders for so long, and all this time we haven't even heard our Father's voice. I am unsure." The emptiness, the doubt was about to swallow her. "I am unsure if He even cares what we do anymore."

She didn't wait for Castiel to advise her to contact Heaven.

Somewhere over Ohio she found herself alone. She tried to imagine the sweetness of cake and the warmth of chocolate, the softness of skin and the damp cool of grass, as impossible and beautiful as the face of God. She thought of Lucifer and filled with loathing, and she remembered the hushed voices of lovers, the unconditional forgiveness of a father.

Anna carved a jagged hole where her grace coiled inside her and flung it away. Her wings ripped free with it, and she scattered like shards of glass to Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of characters came and went in Supernatural (just about all of them, in fact), but Anna really stuck with me for some reason. She's an especially tragic character, and it seems like her most tragic flaw was just wanting connection. I always wondered a lot about what the breaking point was for her, what was the line she just had to cross.
> 
> Obligatory Richard Siken reference for the title. It's "Road Music" from "Crush," and I highly recommend reading the whole collection if you haven't already.
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> -Bee


End file.
